Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
(Season 5, Episode 3)
“Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home—the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson’s flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he’s traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson’s plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.”
Some of the absolute best episodes of The Twilight Zone explore the stigmas and fears around mental illness–namely the paranoid feeling that no one around them will believe them. When Bob Wilson (portrayed by a young William Shatner) attempts to warn his wife and a flight crew that there’s a gremlin tearing their plane apart, this is exactly what happens. After all, he had a nervous breakdown six months prior during his last flight. Desperation causes him to shoot an emergency exit door, nearly getting himself sucked out of the plane in the process. As he’s being escorted off the plane in a straitjacket, the camera pans across to the wing of the plane, which has been visibly torn apart by the gremlin, proving to the audience that he was lucid the whole time. Flying is hard enough, but the idea that some creature is hellbent on destroying your plane AND is dastardly enough to try to make everyone think you’re crazy at the same time so you can’t do anything about it? Nightmarish, indeed. -Bri Lockhart
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